Welcome to 2008 from Google Australia

Posted by Julian Persaud, Head of Business Development

Happy new year!

As our regular blog readers will know, 2007 was an amazing year for all of us at Google Australia, with a huge raft of new products, features and local initiatives, from the launch of Google Maps Australia, to the Doodle4Google initiative, to the first ever Google election site, to the announcement of agreements with major Australian businesses such as Fairfax Digital and News Digital Media.

Already in 2008, we've been busy with a number of announcements. For those of you watching at home:

• We launched a new version of Sky in Google Earth which has many great new features. (You may recall that Sky uses images from the Anglo-Australian Observatory).

• As increasing numbers of small Australian businesses, from local cafes to cosmetic dentists, are using Google AdWords, we’re thrilled to reach an agreement under which ReachLocal will become an AdWords reseller in Australia. This will help Australian SMEs participate in the digital economy.

• Australian advertisers can now take advantage of the expanded Conversion Optimiser feature in AdWords. (Available to customers whose campaigns have enabled AdWords Conversion Tracking and accrued at least 200 conversions in the past 30 days).

Stay tuned to this blog - and all the other official Google blogs on the right hand side of this page - for lots more Google news in 2008.